The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, Third Revised Edition
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More bottles are opened—there is a case of this stuff—and
when all the cups are filled, Bob lifts his own.
"Here's to a new plant record in shipments of product," he
says. "Lou went through the records for us and discovered that
until now the best this place has ever done in a month was thirty-
one orders shipped at value of about two million dollars. This
month we topped that. We shipped fifty-seven customer orders
with a value of ... well, in round numbers, we'll call it a cool
three million."
"Not only did we ship more product," says Stacey, "but, having just calculated our inventory levels, I am pleased to report
that between last month and now, we've had a twelve percent net
decline in work-in-process inventory."
"Well, then, let's drink to making money!" I say.
And we do.
"Mmmmm . . . industrial strength champagne," says
Stacey.
"Very distinctive," says Ralph to Bob. "Did you pick this out yourself?"
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"Keep drinking. It gets better," says Donovan.
I'm just about to hazard a second cup when I notice Fran
beside me.
"Mr. Rogo?"
"Yes."
"Bill Peach is on the line," says Fran.
I shake my head wondering what the hell it's going to be this
time.
"I'll take it at your desk, Fran."
I go out there and punch the blinking button on my phone
and pick it up.
"Yes, Bill, what can I do for you?"
"I was just talking to Johnny Jons," says Peach.
I automatically grab a pencil and pull over a pad of paper to
take down the particulars on whatever order is causing us grief. I
wait for Peach to continue, but he doesn't say anything for a
second.
"What's the problem?" I ask him.
"No problem," says Peach. "Actually he was very happy."
"Really? What about?"
"He mentioned you've been coming through lately for him
on a lot of late customer orders," says Peach. "Some kind of special effort I guess."
"Well, yes and no. We're doing a few things a little differently
now," I say.
"Well, whatever. The reason I called is I know how I'm al-
ways on your case when things go wrong, Al, so I just wanted to
tell you thanks from me and Jons for doing something right,"
says Peach.
"Thanks, Bill," I tell him. "Thanks for calling."
"Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou," I'm blith-
ering to Stacey as she parks her car in my driveway. "You are a
truly wonderful person for driving me home . . . and I truly
meant that truly."
"Don't mention it," she says. "I'm glad we had something to celebrate."
She shuts off the engine. I look up at my house, which is
dark except for one light. I had the good sense earlier to call my
mother and tell her not to hold dinner for me. That was smart
because the celebration continued onward and outward after
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Peach's call. About half of the original group went to dinner to-
gether. Lou and Ralph threw in the towel early. But Donovan,
Stacey and I—along with three or four die-hards—went to a bar
after we ate and we had a good time. Now it is 1:30 and I am
blissfully stinko.
The Mazda for safety's sake, it still parked behind the bar.
Stacey, who switched to club soda a couple of hours ago, has
generously played chauffeur to Bob and me. About ten minutes
ago, we nudged Donovan through his kitchen door where he
stood there bewildered for a moment before bidding us a good
evening. If he remembers, Donovan is supposed to enlist his wife
later today to drive us over to the bar and retrieve our vehicles.
Stacey gets out of the car and comes around and opens my
door so I can spill myself onto the driveway. Standing up on
uncertain legs, I steady myself against the car.
"I've never seen you smile so much," says Stacey.
"I've got a lot to smile about," I tell her.
"Wish you could be this happy in staff meetings," she says.
"Henceforth, I shall smile continuously through all staff
meetings," I proclaim.
"Come on, I'll make sure you get to the door," she says.
With her hands around my arm to steady me, she guides me
up the front walk to the door.
When we're at the door, I ask her, "How about some cof-
fee?"
"No, thanks," she says. "It's late and I'd better get home."
"Sure?"
"Absolutely."
I fumble with the keys, find the lock, and the door swings
open to a dark living room. I turn to Stacey and extend my hand.
"Thank you for a wonderful evening," I tell her. "I had a
swell time."
Then as we're shaking hands, I for some reason step back-
wards, trip over the doorstep and lose all my balance.
"Woops!"
The next thing I know Stacey and I are sprawled on the
floor together. Fortunately—or maybe not as it turns out—Stacey
thinks this is colossally funny. She's laughing so hard, tears start
to roll down her cheeks. And so I start laughing too. Both of us
are rolling on the floor with laughter—when the lights come on.
"You bastard!"
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I look up, my eyes adjusting to the sudden light, and there
she is.
"Julie? What are you doing here?"
Without answering, she's now stomping through the kitchen.
As I get to my feet and stagger after her, the door to the garage
opens. The light switch in the garage clicks. I see her in silhouette
for half a second.
"Julie! Wait a minute!"
I hear the garage door rumbling open as I attempt to follow
her. As I go into the garage, she's already getting into her car.
The door slams. I zig-zag closer, wildly waving my arms. The
engine starts.
"I sit here waiting for you all night, putting up with your
mother for six hours," she yells through the rolled-down window,
"and you come home drunk with some floozy!"
"But Stacey isn't a floozy, she's—"
Accelerating to about thirty miles per hours in reverse, Julie
backs out of the garage, down the driveway (narrowly missing
Stacey's car) and into the street. I'm left standing there in the
light of the garage. The tires of her car chirp upon the asphalt.
She's gone.
On Saturday morning, I wake up and groan a couple of
times. The first groan is from the hangover. The second groan is
from the memory of what happened.
When I'm able, I get dressed and venture into the kitchen in
quest of coffee. My mother is there.
"You know your wife was here last night," says my mother as
I pour my first cup.
So then I find out what happened. Julie showed up just after
I called here
last night. She had driven over on impulse, because
she had missed me and she had wanted to see the kids. She ap-
parently wanted to surprise me, which she did.
Later, I call the Barnett's number. Ada gives me the routine
of "She doesn't want to talk to you anymore."
When I get to the plant on Monday, Fran tells me Stacey has
been looking for me since she arrived this morning. I have just
settled in behind my desk when Stacey appears at the door.
"Hi. Can we talk?" she asks.
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"Sure. Come on in," I say.
She seems disturbed about something. She's avoiding my
eyes as she sits down.
I say, "Listen, about Friday night, I'm sorry about what hap-
pened when you dropped me off."
Stacey says, "It's okay. Did your wife come back?"
"Uh, well, no, she didn't. She's staying with her parents for a
little while," I say.
"Was it just because of me?" she asks.
"No, we've been having some problems lately."
"Al, I still feel kind of responsible," she says. "Look, why don't I talk to her."
"No, you don't have to do that," I say.
"Really, I think I ought to talk to her," says Stacey. "What's her number?"
I finally admit to myself it might be worth a try. So I give the
Barnett's number to Stacey. She writes it down, and promises to
call sometime today. Then she continues to sit there.
"Was there something else?" I ask.
"I'm afraid there is," she says.
She pauses.
"So what is it?"
"I don't think you're going to like this," she says. "But I'm pretty sure about it ..."
"Stacey," I say. "What?"
"The bottlenecks have spread."
"What do you mean 'the bottlenecks have spread'?" I ask. "Is there a disease out there or something?"
"No, what I mean is we have a new bottleneck—or maybe
even more than one; I'm not sure yet. Here, let me show you,"
she says as she comes around the side of the desk with some
computer print-outs she's brought. "These are listings of parts
that are queued up at final assembly."
She goes over the lists with me. As always, the bottleneck
parts are still in short supply. But lately there have been
shortages of some non-bottleneck parts as well.
She says, "Last week we had a case in which we had to build
an order for 200 DBD-50's. Out of 172 different parts, we were
missing 17. Only one of them was a red-tagged part. The rest
were green tags. The red part came out of heat-treat on Thurs-
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day and was ready by Friday morning. But the others are still
missing."
I lean back in my chair and pinch the bridge of my nose.
"Dammit, what the hell is going on out there? I had assumed
the parts that have to go through a bottleneck would reach as-
sembly last. Is there a materials shortage on those green-tagged
parts? Some kind of vendor problem?" I ask her.
Stacey shakes her head. "No, I haven't had any problems
with purchasing. And none of the parts have any processing by
outside contractors. The problem is definitely internal. That's
why I really think we have one or more new bottlenecks."
I get up from my desk, walk around the office.
"Maybe with the increase in throughput, we've loaded the
plant to a level that we've run out of capacity on some other
resources in addition to heat-treat and the NCX-10," Stacey sug-
gests quietly.
I nod. Yes, that sounds like a possibility. With the bottlenecks
more productive now, our throughput has gone up and our
backlog is declining. But making the bottlenecks more productive
has put more demand on the other work centers. If the demand
on another work center has gone above one hundred percent,
then we've created a new bottleneck.
Of the ceiling, I ask, "Does this mean we're going to have to
go through the whole process of finding the bottlenecks all over
again? Just when it seemed like we were on our way out of this
mess. . . ."
Stacey folds the print-outs.
I tell her, "Okay, look, I want you to find out everything you
can—exactly which parts, how many, what products are affected,
which routings they're on, how often they're missing, all that
stuff. Meanwhile, I'm going to try to get hold of Jonah to see what
he has to say about all this."
After Stacey leaves, and Fran does the calling to locate Jonah.
I stand by the window in my office and stare at the lawn while I
think. I took it as a good sign that inventory levels had declined
after we implemented the new measures to make the bottleneck-
more productive. A month ago we were wading through parts on
the non-bottleneck routings. There were piles and piles, and the
piles kept growing. But some of the stocks have dwindled over
the past couple of weeks of product assembly. Last week, for the
first time since I've been at this plant, you could actually walk
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over to the assembly line without having to turn sideways to
squeeze between the stacks and bins of inventory. I thought it was
good. But now this happens.
"Mr. Rogo," says Fran through the intercom speaker. "I've
got him on the line."
I pick up the phone. "Jonah? Hi. Listen, we've got trouble
here."
"What's wrong?" he asks.
After I tell him the symptoms, Jonah asks what we've done
since his visit. So I relate all the history to him—putting Q.C. in
front of the bottlenecks, training people to give special care to
bottleneck parts, activating the three machines to supplement the
NCX-10, the new lunch rules, assigning certain people to work
only at the bottlenecks, increasing the batch sizes going into heat-
treat, implementing the new priority system in the plant. . . .
"New priority system?" asks Jonah.
"Right," I say, and then I explain about the red tags and
green tags, and how the system works.
Jonah says, "Maybe I'd better come have another look."
I'm at home that night when the phone rings.
"Hi," says Julie's voice when I answer.
"Hi."
"I owe you an apology. I'm sorry about what happened on
Friday night," she says. "Stacey called me here. Al, I'm really
embarrassed. I completely misunderstood."
"Yeah, well ... it seems to me there's a lot of misunder-
standing between us lately," I say.
"All I can say is I'm sorry. I drove down thinking you'd be
glad to see me."
"I would have been if you'd stayed," I say. "In fact, if I'd known you were coming, I would have come home after work."
"I know I should have called," she says, "but I was just in one of those moods."
"I guess you shouldn't have waited for me," I tell her.
She says, "I just
kept thinking you'd be home any minute.
And the whole time, your mother kept giving me the evil eye.
Finally she and the kids went to bed, and about an hour later I
fell asleep on the sofa and slept until you came in."
"Well . . . you want to be friends again?"
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I can hear her relief.
"Yes, I would," she says. "When will I see you?"
I suggest we try Friday all over again. She says she can't wait
that long. We compromise on Wednesday.
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25
Deja vu. At the airport next morning, I again greet Jonah as
he walks out of Gate Two.
By ten o'clock, we're in the conference room at the plant.
Sitting around the table are Lou, Bob, Ralph and Stacey. Jonah
paces in front of us.
"Let's start with some basic questions," he says. "First of all, have you determined exactly which parts are giving you the
problem?"
Stacey, who is sitting at the table with a veritable fortress of
paper around her and looking as if she's ready for a siege, holds
up a list.
She says, "Yes, we've identified them. In fact, I spent last
night tracking them down and double checking the data with
what's on the floor out there. Turns out the problem covers thirty
parts."
Jonah asks, "Are you sure you released the materials for
them?"
"Oh, yes," says Stacey. "No problem there. They've been
released according to schedule. But they're not reaching final
assembly. They're stuck in front of our new bottleneck."
"Wait a minute. How do you know it's really a bottleneck?"
asks Jonah.
She says, "Well, since the parts are held up, I just figured it
had to be . . ."
"Before we jump to conclusions, let's invest half an hour to
go into the plant so we can find out what's happening," Jonah
says.
So we parade into the plant, and a few minutes later we're
standing in front of a group of milling machines. Off to one side
are big stacks of inventory marked with green tags. Stacey stands
there and points out the parts that are needed in final assembly.
Most of the missing parts are right here and all bear green tags.
Bob calls over the foreman, a hefty guy by the name of Jake, and
introduces him to Jonah.
"Yeah, all them parts been sittin' here for about two, three